Vermont Towns Protect Wildlife and Vote ‘No’ on Tar Sands

The pipeline passes through Barton, crossing Barton River and running alongside Crystal Lake. Barton is one of 13 towns to pass resolutions opposing tar sands.

Town Meeting Day 2014 was a great day in the continued fight to keep tar sands out of Vermont and protect wildlife like moose from this dirty oil. When people from around the state gathered in our time-honored tradition of direct democracy, 13 towns voted to take a stand against the possibility of toxic tar sands being transported through an aging pipeline in the Northeast Kingdom, or by any other means.

The Northeast Kingdom speaks up

Perhaps the most telling part of this news is where the towns are: The majority of towns who considered and passed these resolutions are in the Northeast Kingdom, some of them crossed by the 60-year-old pipeline itself.

Sutton, where the pumping station for the pipeline in Vermont is located, passed the resolution after some discussion.

David Tucker spoke in favor, and said the conversation among neighbors was helpful. “Sutton voters don’t want to be overlooked,” he said. “Our town’s natural beauty is valuable to us, and we don’t want even the possibility of an environmental accident here to be ignored just because we are such a small town.

“The people I talked with wanted to make sure that we raised our voices so that our town is recognized as our home, and not just an irrelevant place on the map,” he added.

“I got a whole lot of signatures at the Glover recycling center one cold Saturday morning,” said Linda Elbow, who worked to get the resolution on the warning for Glover’s meeting, where it passed. “And it was worth it.”

What about a spill?

Transporting tar sands through Vermont would directly threaten the moose, fish and birds that rely on clean water to survive. Photo donated by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Marin Packer.

The Portland-Montreal pipeline runs from Portland, Maine, northward to Montreal. The company that operates the pipeline has expressed interest in reversing its flow and using it to transport diluted tar sands bitumen – a form of heavy crude that must be strip mined or drained from the earth in a process similar to fracking, then diluted with chemicals to be pumped through pipelines – from Alberta’s tar sands deposits and south through New England.

“These resolutions are the result of Vermonters up and down the pipeline, and from every corner of the state, getting informed about tar sands and spreading the word to their neighbors,” said 350 Vermont’s Jade Walker. “Once people find out the devastation and pollution caused by tar sands extraction and transport– combined with the unique difficulty of cleaning up spills where they have occurred – they want nothing to do with it.”

Not only does tar sands extraction devastate wildlife habitat at the source in Alberta, transporting tar sands through Vermont would directly threaten the moose, fish and birds that rely on clean water to survive.